red bean ice

Winter made an unceremonious entrance today with rain and 6 degrees. We intended to go to Hatsune, possibly my favourite restaurant here, for dinner, but after our hard-fought taxi got a flat tyre down a back road we abandoned any thoughts of going down town. Just as well as the traffic was so bad (the effect of rain is a little bit like the leaves-on-the-line rail excuse in the UK, but worse) that a few drivers were actually following us down the pavement... I took a picture, to the great consternation of idiot driver #1, but you can't see much.

Instead we ventured to a local Korean restaurant, Ai Jiang Shan, and tried out a few dishes from the much-loved kimchi (a pickled cabbage dish that apparently stopped the Koreans getting bird flu- or was it swine flu?) to beef bulgogi. This red bean ice- basically kidney beans on sweet ice- was our free dessert, and is very popular in this part of the world. It wasn't a huge favourite...